These downs around St. Martin’s Head are beautiful in their autumn garb of purple; they are no less beautiful in the spring, when the heather forms a carpet of velvety-brown, here slightly greenish, there again rich as burnt-sienna in colour, with bushes of gorse scattered about upon it; and around them always lies the blue and emerald circle of the sea.
St. Martin’s men are great potters, and divide their time between this work and farming. Piloting used to occupy them a great deal; and still standing all along the shore, but fast falling into ruin, are the rows of sheds where the pilot-boats were kept.
White Island, the most northerly of the Scillies and a wild, weird spot, can be reached on foot from St. Martin’s at low tide. It contains yet a third “Piper’s Hole,” better known as “Underland Girt,” a dark and gloomy chasm, frequented by sea-birds.
There are three little rocks off the south coast of St. Martin’s, which bear the sinister name of “The Three Damned Sinners.” One can fancy that the name goes back to the time when superstition was rife in the islands, and when it was thought that the spirits of the shipwrecked who had done evil in this life would never rest; and the shrieking and skirling of birds around these rocks would have been attributed to the yelling of restless spirits, till the rocks themselves came to be called after them.
I do not know why it is, but St. Martin’s seems to be less visited than the other islands. It certainly is not less attractive, and those who go there soon find that it has a charm of its own. Its inhabitants are very proud of their island, and very willing to give a welcome to strangers.
There is at least one man on St. Martin’s who has never been to the mainland, and to whom motor-cars and trains would be a great novelty. For motor-cars are never seen in Scilly except in the form of wreck-salvage! And trains are, of course, unknown. But perhaps he would as resolutely refuse to be surprised as the sturdy Scillonian who, on his first visit to England, would only say, “Everything is very like Scilly, only bigger, and more of ’em.”
St. Helen’s Island lies off to the north-west of St. Martin’s; but St. Helen has by rights neither part nor lot in this island which bears her name. It appears to have been originally dedicated to St. Elidius, who, as William of Worcester tells us, was buried in Scilly, and very likely on this island.
In Leland’s time the name had been shortened to St. Lide’s, and the sex of the Saint was already forgotten, for he speaks of “Saynct Lides Isle, wher yn tymes past at her sepulchre was gret superstition.”
St. Elidius was Bishop of Llandaff in the sixth century, and during the yellow plague he went to stay in Brittany with his friend St. Sampson, the Bishop of Dol, to whom the neighbouring island of Samson is dedicated. He was in his old age called Elios, “for that his doctrine shone like the sun.” This name, St. Elios, appears to have become, by different stages, St. Teilo, St. Dillo, and St. Dellan, whence it easily passed into St. Helen.
Dr. Borlase mentions a church on St. Helen’s as the most ancient Christian building in Scilly. He thus describes it as it stood in 1756:—